It's a family tradition...


Wake up! wake up! Santa Claus has been here! It's only 5:30 comes the grumble from the parents bedroom, go back to bed!


Remember that? I'm sure some of you had the experience this morning. All my kids sleep more than I do now...that will change in the next two or three years, as Odessa gets a little older.

At my little W. Va. mountain top world of snow and ice, I let the girl's mama wrestle with the girls and the presents while I turned on the coffee and shook up the wood stove. Slowly, I would wake up in my chair with a cup of coffee to squeals of Daddy, Daddy look at this!

It seemed like hours before the sun came up. By 10:00 My Little Pony, Barbie etc were old hat...time to go visiting. Yeah! More presents!


My Daddy was a funny one about Christmas. We got a tree about 3 or 4 days before Christmas. We loaded up his 1930 Model A with the one wheel trailer behind it and headed out Jefferson River Road , or the old Callaway Dairy Farm and proceed to look for the "perfect tree".

It was always a pine tree, I never knew why. There were some pretty red cedar around. I don't know who demanded pine, but we had little say. After a couple of hours we came home with a tree, built the obligatory crossed 2x4 stand and took the tree in the house. It was always bigger than it looked outside, and had holes you could drive a truck through, but there it was, after a whole year of waiting. Get out the bubble lights!

Christmas morning was early for us kids, but Daddy used the occasion to drraaawww things out. "You kids get dressed".

What? I want to rip paper! What have clothes do do with ripping paper, I'll put on the shirt Aunt Attaway always gives me when I open it. I want to rip and tear!

After a while Daddy would come in, dressed in his plaid smoking jacket, inspect the scene, sit on his stool by the tree and proceed to hand out presents one at a time...each one of us getting one and sharing it with others before another was handed out! Man, I'd almost bust a gut! It took forever!

Looking back, it was the tradition our family followed, not the one my family followed and not the one my children's family will follow.

It's the family traditions of Christmas that keep everything in perspective. For those two or three hours on Christmas morning, family traditions reigns...and God is in his heaven...

Merry Christmas